A Public Choice Theory of “Taxonomic Inflation”

 

The excerpt below is from a WSJ summary of an article that appeared in The Economist on May 19, 2007.

 

Scientists have taken to upgrading animals once thought to be subspecies into full-fledged species, in what the Economist says is an overzealous attempt to boost conservation of seemingly rare animals.

Sometimes, the reclassification of animals into their own species category is warranted, as new research reveals once-obscured markers that differentiate certain beasts. But lately, the weekly says, primatologists have been suffering from "taxonomic inflation."

. . .

. . .   One reason is that by fragmenting animal groups, the number of rare species increases, boosting animal-conservation claims.  At the same time, having a greater number of species boosts the chances that a habitat can pursue a legal designation as a protected area.

 

For the full summary, see: 

"Informed Reader; NATURE; Species Inflation May Infect Over-Eager Conservationists."  The Wall Street Journal  (Sat., May 19, 2007):  A6.

(Note:  ellipsis added.)

 

We Should Not Be Forced to Fluoresce

 

Source of lighting table:  online version of the WSJ article cited below.

 

I’ve been using some of the compact fluorescent light bulbs for a few years.  They’re very slightly slower to turn on, and I don’t like the quality of light quite as well, but the money I figure I save is enough, for me, to outweigh the minor disadvantages.  But I can easily imagine a rational person viewing the trade-offs differently.  So it galls me that some environmentalists want to force us to fluoresce. 

If enough people are willing to pay the higher energy costs of incandescent light, then we should let private enterprise build more nuclear power plants to provide consumers what they should be free to buy.

 

(p. A1)  WASHINGTON — Manufacturers and environmentalists are hammering out a nationwide energy-saving lighting standard that, if enacted by Congress, would effectively phase out the common household light bulb in about 10 years. That in turn could produce major cuts in the nation’s electricity costs and greenhouse-gas emissions.

The new standard is expected to compel a huge shift by American consumers and businesses away from incandescent bulbs to more efficient — but also more expensive — fluorescent models, by requiring more light per energy unit than is yielded by most incandescents in use. The winner, at least in the near term, likely would be the compact fluorescent light bulb, or CFL.

 

For the full story, see:

JOHN J. FIALKA and KATHRYN KRANHOLD.  "Households Would Need New Bulbs To Meet Lighting-Efficiency Rule."  The Wall Street Journal  (Sat., May 5, 2007):  A1 & A5. 

 

 FluorescentBulb.gif   The bulb I like, but don’t want to be forced to use.  Source of image:  online version of the WSJ article cited above.

 

Biodiversity Can Survive Rain Forest Logging

 

The passage below is excerpted from a WSJ summary of a New Scientist article dated May 12, 2007.

 

While rain forests are being burned and cut down by loggers and farmers at a rapid rate, the damage is far from irreversible, say Helene Muller-Landau of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis-St. Paul and Joseph Wright of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. Many tropical species can survive in isolated patches of forest after a mass clearing and then flourish once trees regrow. What’s more, they say, as people continue to abandon rural areas and migrate to cities, forests are likely to regrow in their wake.

They predict that extinction threatens less than 20% of the tropical Americas’ forest species, 21% to 24% of Asia’s and 16% to 35% of Africa’s, far below the 80% figure predicted by other studies.

 

For the full summary, see: 

"Informed Reader; ENVIRONMENT; If Trees Fall in Rain Forest, Biodiversity Can Survive."  The Wall Street Journal  (Fri., May 11, 2007):  B5.

 

Global Warming Allows Growing Subtropical Plants Further North

 

   Source of graphic:  online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

 

(p. A1)  Forget the jokes about beachfront property. If global warming has any upside, it would seem to be for gardeners, who make up three-quarters of the population and spend $34 billion a year, according to the National Gardening Association. Many experts agree that climate change, which by some estimates has already nudged up large swaths of the country by one or more plant-hardiness zones, has meant a longer growing season and a more robust selection. There are palm trees in Knoxville and subtropical camellias in Pennsylvania.

 

For the full story, see: 

SHAILA DEWANSHAILA DEWAN.  "Feeling Warmth, Subtropical Plants Move North."  The New York Times  (Thurs., May 3, 2007):  A1 & A20.

 

Argentine Evidence on Global Warming

 

   Source:  screen capture from the Reuters video clip mentioned below.

 

On July 10, 2007, Reuters and other news sources (including CNN) reported that Buenos Aires had experienced its first snowfall in 80 years.

To see Reuters’ brief video clip on the snow, visit: 

http://www.javno.com/video.php?rbr=4137&l=en

 

ArgentineSnowCoveredTrucks.jpg   "A truck driver makes his way through snow-covered trucks Tuesday in Punta de Vacas, Argentina."  Source of the truck caption and photo:   

"Snow leaves trucks stranded on Argentina-Chile border."  CNN.com POSTED: 3:06 p.m. EDT, June 13, 2007.

 

Nuclear Expensive “Because of Exaggerated Popular Fears”

 

In his public testimony Mr. Gore seemed to be convoluting several things, suggesting somehow that nuclear plants are too expensive and take too long to build because they only come "extra-large." This is not true.

Nuclear plants take more time to build and are more expensive than comparative coal plants, but they are not prohibitively expensive. The Japanese are now building reactors in five years at competitive prices. Higher construction costs are more than compensated by lower fuel costs and higher capacity ratings. America’s existing nuclear plants are now operating so profitably that Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal recently proposed a windfall profits tax because the state’s reactors were making too much money.

. . .

The reason building nuclear plants has been expensive and time-consuming is because of exaggerated popular fears of the technology. The public is now coming around. Seventy percent now consider nuclear plants acceptable, meaning new plants will probably not become bogged down in endless court delays.

 

For the full commentary, see: 

WILLIAM TUCKER.  "Our Atomic Future."  The Wall Street Journal  (Weds., March 28, 2007):  A16.

(Note:  ellipsis added.)

 

The Legacy of Rachel Carson

 

GoreDreamingRachelCarson.gif   Al Gore dreams of Rachel Carson.  Source of image:  online version of the WSJ article cited below.

 

. . .   The World Health Organization now estimates that there are between 300 and 500 million cases of malaria annually, causing approximately one million deaths. About 80% of those are young children, millions of whom could have been saved over the years with the regular application of DDT to their environments.

Carson cannot be blamed directly for these deaths. She didn’t urge total bans in "Silent Spring." Instead, on the single page obliquely acknowledging DDT as an anti-malarial agent, she writes, "Practical advice should be ‘Spray as little as you possibly can’ rather than ‘Spray to the limit of your capacity.’"

In the National Archives exhibit, Carson is described as "a passionate voice for protecting the environment and human health." Her concerns about the effects of insect death on bird populations were well-founded. But threats to human health were central to her argument, and Carson was wrong about those. Despite massive exposure in many populations over several decades, there is no decisive evidence that DDT causes cancer in people, and it is unforgivable that she overlooked the enormous boon of DDT for malaria control in her own time.

. . .

. . .   DDT remains the cheapest and most powerful tool for stopping malaria. When sprayed on interior walls, it has virtually zero interaction with wild ecosystems. Yet when the topic of relaxing restrictions in order to save millions of lives comes up, someone inevitably brandishes a copy of "Silent Spring" and opposition is silenced so completely that you could hear a mosquito buzzing in the next room. 

 

For the full commentary, see: 

KATHERINE MANGU-WARD.  "Suffering in Silence."   The Wall Street Journal  (Fri., April 20, 2007):   W13.

(Note:  ellipses added.)

 

“The Least Hospitable Environment on Earth”

 

   Source of the book image:  http://images.usatoday.com/money/_photos/2007/03/26/cubicle-bookx-large.jpg

 

Office humor is an oxymoron. At least that was the prevailing view until Scott Adams’s "Dilbert" comic strip and, more recently, British television import "The Office" opened up this fertile ground for mainstream ridicule. The latest entry in the growing corpus of workplace-whacking is "The Cubicle Survival Guide: Keeping Your Cool in the Least Hospitable Environment on Earth," by first-time author and Web-site production coordinator James F. Thompson.

Mr. Thompson’s target: the cubicle, or "cube," as it is not so fondly known. It’s surprising to learn that this ubiquitous steel-and-fabric prison was not invented until the 1960s, the dubious brainstorm of a Colorado fine-arts professor named Bob Probst. His goal, according to Mr. Thompson, was to encourage co-workers to "freely exchange ideas and inspiration" — and not, as commonly believed, to breed a legion of the undead who feel they are somehow unworthy of, say, a door.

 

For the full review, see: 

MARTIN KIHN.  "BOOKS; The Best Way to Labor Away in Our Little Boxes." The Wall Street Journal  (Weds., March 14, 2007):  D9. 

 

The reference to the book, is: 

James F. Thompson.  THE CUBICLE SURVIVAL GUIDE.  (Villard, 216 pages, $12.95)

 

Environmental “Horror-Movie Scenarios Are Looking Less and Less Plausible”

 

(p. D2)  . . . most of the horror-movie scenarios are looking less and less plausible. Climate change will probably occur not with a bang but with a long, slow whimper, as you can see in the new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The report concludes that it’s ”very likely” that humans are now the main factor warming the climate. But even as the panel’s scientists are becoming surer of the problem, and warning of grim consequences this century and beyond, they’re eschewing crowd-thrilling catastrophes. Since the last I.P.C.C. report, six years ago, they haven’t raised the estimates of future temperatures and sea levels.

While Mr. Gore’s movie shows coastlines flooded by a 20-foot rise in sea level, the report’s projections for the rise this century range from 7 inches to 23 inches. The panel says Greenland’s ice sheet will shrink and might eventually disappear, but the process could take ”millennia.” The Antarctic ice sheet is projected to grow, not shrink, because of increased snowfall.

The scientists acknowledge uncertainties and worrisome new signs, like the sudden acceleration in the flow of Greenland’s glaciers several years ago. But the panel, unlike Mr. Gore, didn’t extrapolate a short-term trend into a disaster, and its caution is vindicated by a report in the current issue of Science that the flow of two of the largest glaciers abruptly decelerated last year to near the old rate.

The panel does consider it ”likely” that future typhoons and hurricanes will be stronger than today’s. But it also expects fewer of these storms (albeit with ”less confidence” in that projection).

As for the Gulf Stream, it is ”very unlikely” to undergo ”a large abrupt transition during the 21st century,” according to the new report. The current is expected to slow slightly, meaning a little less heat from the tropics would reach the North Atlantic, which could be good news for Europe and North America, since that would temper some of the impact of global warming in the north.

Whatever happens, you can stop fretting about the Gulf Stream scenario in Mr. Gore’s movie and that full-fledged Hollywood disaster film ”The Day After Tomorrow.” Mr. Gore’s companion book has a fold-out diagram of the Gulf Stream and warns that ”some scientists are now seriously worried” about it shutting down and sending Europe into an ice age, but he must have been talking to the wrong scientists.

There wouldn’t be glaciers in the English shires even if the Gulf Stream did shut down. To understand why, you need to disregard not only the horror movies but also what you learned in grade school: that the Gulf Stream is responsible for keeping London so much warmer than New York even though England is farther north than Newfoundland.

This theory, originated by a 19th-century oceanographer, is ”the earth-science equivalent of an urban legend,” in the words of Richard Seager, a climate modeler at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. He and other researchers have calculated that the Gulf Stream’s influence typically raises land temperatures in the north by only five degrees Fahrenheit, hardly enough to explain England’s mild winters, much less its lack of glaciers.

Moreover, as the Gulf Stream meanders northward, it delivers just about as much heat to the eastern United States and Canada as to Europe, so it can’t account for the difference between New York and London. Dr. Seager gives the credit to the prevailing westerly winds — and the Rocky Mountains.

When these winds out of the west hit the Rockies, they’re diverted south, bringing air from the Arctic down on New York (as in last week’s cold spell). After their southern detour, the westerlies swing back north, carrying subtropical heat toward London. This Rocky Mountain detour accounts for about half the difference between New York and London weather, according to Dr. Seager.

The other half is caused by to the simple fact that London sits on the east side of an ocean — just like Seattle, which has a much milder climate than Siberia, the parallel land across the Pacific. Since ocean water doesn’t cool as quickly as land in winter, or heat up as much in summer, the westerly winds blowing over the ocean moderate the winter and summer temperatures in both Seattle and London.  

 

For the full story, see: 

John Tierney. "FINDINGS; A Cool $25 Million For a Climate Backup Plan."  The New York Times (Tues., February 13, 2007):  D1-D2.

(Note:  ellipsis added.)

 

Burned Up Over Gas Rationing in Iran

 

   "Protesters burned at least two gas stations in Tehran after the Oil Ministry announced gas rationing would begin Wednesday just after midnight."  Source of caption and photo:  online version of the NYT article cited below.

 

TEHRAN, June 27 — Angry drivers set fire to at least two gas stations overnight in Tehran after the government announced that gasoline rationing would begin Wednesday just after midnight.

The state television news said Wednesday that “several gas stations and public places had been attacked by vandals.” While there were some reports that a large number of gas stations had been set on fire, only two fires were confirmed.

. . .

Under the new regulations announced by the Oil Ministry on Tuesday evening, private cars will be able to buy a maximum of 26 gallons of gasoline a month at the subsidized price of 34 cents per gallon. Taxis will be allowed 211 gallons a month. Parliament would have to determine whether individuals would be allowed to buy more at market rates.

There were long lines at gas stations in Tehran on Wednesday, causing traffic jams, and the police moved in to control the lines.

Iran is OPEC’s second-largest exporter of oil. But it needs to import half of its gasoline — at a cost of $5 billion a year — because of high consumption and low refining capabilities.

Inflation in Iran had already been high, as a result of a combination of economic factors and government decisions. The price of dairy products like milk, butter and yogurt increased this week by at least 20 percent.

 

For the full story, see: 

NAZILA FATHI.  "2 Iranian Gas Stations Burned Over Rationing."  The New York Times   (Thurs., June 28, 2007):  A8. 

(Note:  ellipsis added.)

 

Bjorn Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus Against Kyoto

 

(p. 8) Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish statistician who recently led the Copenhagen Consensus, an economic analysis of global environment and development issues , said that while global warming was a serious problem, Kyoto-style limits would have little impact and would divert resources better spent on alleviating poverty.

He said one element missing from most climate discussions was the need for a more vigorous effort to improve climate-friendly energy technologies like solar power and carbon capture, in which greenhouse emissions are trapped and pumped underground before they can escape into the atmosphere.

While many advocates have proposed an emissions tax, Dr. Lomborg said a much smaller investment in research and development on such technologies would be more likely to help in the long run.

 

For the full story, see: 

ANDREW C. REVKIN.  "Talks to Start On Climate Amid Split On Warming."  The New York Times, Section 1  (Sun., November 5, 2006):  8.